This document discusses research networking tools that aggregate researcher profiles to enable expertise discovery and collaboration across institutional boundaries. It provides several examples of multi-institutional research networking portals built using Elsevier's Experts platform, including portals connecting universities, government labs, and research institutions both within countries and internationally. These portals aim to stimulate networking and collaboration by allowing users to search for experts across typical research silos and institutions.

1. RESEARCH POSTER PRESENTATION DESIGN © 2012
www.PosterPresentations.com
Innovative interdisciplinaryand multi-institutional portals to stimulate networking and collaboration acrossinstitutional and national boundaries
Research networking is facilitated through web-based expertise profiling systems—research networking tools (RN tools)—that aggregate research and scholarly information about faculty members and investigators to enable the rapid discovery and recommendation of experts to address new or existing research challenges and to facilitate new interdisciplinary collaborations. While most RN tool implementations focus on harvesting and displaying expertise from a single institution and across traditional academic organizational structures, this session will examine the flexibility of Elsevier’s Experts Portal to deliver innovative multi-institutional, cross- sector, and international semantic expertise portals in partnership with universities and other research institutions. These multi-institutional expertise portals are a key to stimulating networking and collaboration across typical research silos.
INTRODUCTION
Facilitate collaborations by exposing scholarly & research connections and make researchers' accomplishments readily discoverable
EXPERTISE PROFILING & RESEARCH NETWORKING
Northwestern Scholars (Northwestern University): First to implement a university-wide research networking tool, profiling faculty researchers across all of its schools, not just those in the STEM fields. Organized their researchers by research centers/institutes and graduate programs, as well as academic depts, to foster expertise discovery across institutional boundaries and promote broad interdisciplinary and collaborative research.
Chicago Collaboration for Women in STEM (Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, DOE Fermi Labs, DOE Argonne Nat’l Lab): The first instance of an RN tool focused on making discoverable members of an underrepresented minority group across regional academic and national laboratory institutions.
Int’l Solar Fuels Institute (SOFI; global research consortium of universities, government labs, and industry): United around the goal of developing and commercializing a liquid solar fuel. The portal connect s researchers internationally across a single initiative and demonstrate a research institute’s collective expertise. Similarly, the Experts portal at MD Anderson Cancer Center includes profiles of cancer researchers from all of its sister institutions around the globe.
REACH NC (NC higher ed& research institutions): A statewide portal that enables users to search, browse and find thousands of experts and assets within North Carolina. REACH NC's expert profiles can assist people in industry, community groups and university personnel in efforts to find information and potential collaborators for research and problem-solving.
Arizona University System’s Research Catalog (AZ Board of Regents, ASU, NAU, U of AZ): An instance of Elsevier’s SciVal Experts that allows you to search for experts by navigating the by concept or last name, or by free text inputs such as articles or funding opportunity announcements.
Michigan Corporate Relations Network (MCRN) Expertise Portal (Five public research universities in the state ): A statewide university research network specifically designed to connect corporations and SME’s to relevant university-based researcher expertise and core facilities to promote innovative cross-sector research and grow Michigan's economy. The portal aims to build on findings that university-industry publications are generally of higher impact and university-industry patents are more likely to be successfully brought to marketand drive revenues.
Like all public Expertsportals, these sites are connected via multiple, cross-institutional federated searches (SciVal Community, Direct2Experts, and CTSAsearch), offering the ability to expand the search for experts and collaborations even more broadly. And the Northwestern Scholars and Women in STEM implementations broadcast datain their profiles openly in RDF triplestore, VIVO-compatible format, which can be accessed freely through any SPARQL endpoint. This provides analysts and developers access to the rich profile information, enabling sophisticated collaboration and networking studies. MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL PORTALS
CONCLUSIONS
Collectively, thesemulti-institutional research networking portals built on Elsevier’s Expertsplatform serve as models for research organizations to extend expertise discovery and networks beyond their institutional boundaries to promote collaborative interdisciplinary and global research.
REFERENCES
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•Schleyer, T., Butler, B.S., Song, M., and Spallek, H. (2012). Conceptualizing and advancing research networking systems. ACM Trans. Comput. Interact. 19, 1–26.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Elsevier Research Intelligence Portfolio
Pure ExpertsPortal: http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/research- intelligence/products-and-services/pure/expertsportal
Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski, PhD
Vice President, Global Academic & Research Relationsh.falk-krzesinski@elsevier.com
Mobile +1 847-848-2953
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/hollyfk
Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski1,2, Daniel Calto1, and Jeff Horon1
1Elsevier, New York, NY; 2Northwesten University, Chicago, IL
Research Networking to Enhance Multi-institutional Expertise Discovery and Collaboration
Expertise Discovery
CRIS
Semantic Search
2012
VIVO-Compliant Experts Instance Launched
22CTSA Institutions w/ Experts (36%)
# of instances worldwide
160+
>160,000
Expert Profiles
Connectivity w/ more than 175 Institutions around the globe
Countries connected through Portals 24
4M
Publications
Statistics account for all live Pure and SciVal Experts instances as of July 29, 2014